Unfortunately, working from home isn’t as easy as some portray. Many individuals and companies are willing to tell you it is, if only you buy this book, program or software, their agenda is to make money from you.

A Bit about Who I am

I have no agenda other than to help people by what I have learned from nine plus years working from home trying to build a business online. I began this journey three years after retiring from a job I held with a company for thirty-seven years.

The company was downsizing and wanted older employees to retire with a package that was hard not to accept.

Because of medical conditions, my wife and I decided it was time to take PacBell up on their offer. I retired in December of 2003 and began my journey my way in February 2006.

Along my journey, I added other services because the company I was contract with asked me to edit a manuscript besides the reviews I was writing for them. Through that company, I began to contract for another company as a reader and writer.

I would read books and determine if a book was worthy of being printed and to write a review if my opinion was yes the story should be considered for publication. Almost the duties of an acquisitions editor.

I have interned as a copy editor for and online site and worked freelance from job boards. I mention this only as a bit of background of what I’ve done from home.

Work from Home

First, ask yourself why you want to work from home.

Freedom

Money

Be your own boss

More time for life (Family, friends … etc.)

Something you feel qualified to do (Would you do it if you never received money for it? This is what passion is all about.)

Make some extra money

Second, forget about life work balance if you want to grow your business and be able to afford to quit your 9 to 5 job. Until your work from home scheme is able to pay for your present lifestyle, don’t quit your day job.

Third and perhaps the most important, how many hats you are willing wear in your business.

There may also have to wear other hats that may crop up while running a business. You must be quick on your feet and flexible. There are always challenges and opportunities to learn more about being a contract employee.

There may be state, county, and local licenses and taxes that may be required to run a business from home.

As a work from home freelancer, you will be responsible for health insurance, business insurance, records, keeping books for the IRS if you are in America. You will be paying quarterly taxes.

How will you conduct your business? You will need to consult an attorney to make a decision to be a DBA (Doing Business As), LLC (Limited Liability Corporation), or an S or C Corporation.

Each has pros and cons. I highly recommend you consult an attorney to explain the differences to you so can make an informed decision.

What do you need to Work from Home?

High speed internet

Computer with sufficient RAM and Hard drive space for business only

A dedicated business telephone line

A dedicated workspace free of distractions

A separate business bank account

Voicemail

As you can see, working from home is far from as simple as some think. It is hard work and long hours to create a thriving home based business.

It is not all downside; there are many benefits to working from home, one needs to look at the reality of working for themselves in a home based business.

Any business is hard work and long hours to make is successful.

If you decide to go into business, think about what I’ve said here and be clear about what your motives for going into a home based business are.

SEO on your website is your domain name, Meta tags, keywords, and keyword phrases woven into the context of your website’s content written for the reader, and relevant to what people are searching for.

Keyword stuffing, or non-relevant terms could get your site banned from search engine rankings.

Readers might leave you site if it doesn’t hold the information, product, or services they searched for. Make sure your site meets the requirements of ranking in search engines.

Stay away from tricks and schemes that people will try and tell you that can get your site to number one overnight. Tricks and schemes, referred to as black hat SEO, using special software or plugins may just backfire causing your site getting it banned from search engines and possibly taken down by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or you blocked by your ISP. If this happens, you won’t be the first nor will you be the last. Someone will always try and beat the system. Follow the rules and be patient, your site will rank, just not overnight.

Content, keywords, and Meta tags isn’t all there is to SEO. SEO is also about backlinks from high quality sites. SEO is also about social media, networking, link exchange, and quality relevant content. SEO is a plan that you must adopt so your business ranks in search engines under the terms that people are searching.

SEO is something that takes hard work, patience, and time to accomplish properly to rank high in search engines.

Why is SEO Important?

Aside from building, your website using the proper W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) rules of coding for websites, content, relevance, and keywords (SEO) are parts of search engine ranking.

An overall SEO plan is to get your site ranked on search engines under the search terms that people are using; this is where your content must deliver the expectations of the people searching.

Without a proper SEO plan, you are just another site out of hundreds of thousands in cyber space. SEO means traffic and potential clients, and without clients, you have no business.

Authors without a viable platform sell no books and cannot engage potential readers.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to know the nuances of SEO, and use them properly to your advantage.

With an SEO plan, your site will receive traffic and with traffic come business.

SEO is one of the most important concepts to learn for your website to rank on search engines..

You can optimize with keywords, use various plugins, and many types of software to attract traffic, but this is where content becomes the king of engagement with potential clients for your business.

SEO& SEM may help with incoming traffic, but once people find a website or blog, is it informational and relevant to the person’s search? How likely are they to tell others about the website because of the content and how engaged they were?

What about the tone of the content on the website?

Is the content academic or conversational? Does the website reflect the tone? You can offer information about a product or service in a conversational tone, information doesn’t need to be like a research report from a scientist.

I’m not saying that you should write down, but to write in plain English. Forget the jargon, and tech terms unless it is necessary, and there are no other way to express what you are saying. Not everyone is an engineer.

You are communicating with people searching quick concise and relevant to their search. A website is responsible for providing that information in an easy to read format without having to visit a specialized dictionary for terminology.

When someone visits a website, how user friendly is the site, is it easy to find contact information? Does the site have an FAQ page, an about page, easy to reach the business if they have additional questions? Is here a catalog, pricelist, or sales list that available for customers?

There should be the name or names that someone with any questions; or to schedule a meeting with knowledgeable people that have the authority to handle customer needs.

You’ve seen that all of the SEO, SEM, and marketing are much more than just old style marketing.

A ghostwriter is someone that writes for another without credit for their work, only paid for the project with no royalties.

It’s the ghostwriters work, but they can’t tell anyone they wrote it because there is no place, listing the ghostwriter. This made me wonder if this is truly ethical as one writer commented on a blog.

If credit taken is the work of another, shouldn’t the one who actually wrote it get the credit and the royalties? A person should receive both credit and royalties for their work to be completely ethical in my opinion.

It is up to the individual writer, as to whether or not they would ghostwrite.

As a published writer of over 300 web content articles, and having a short story published, I have to think long and hard about ghostwriting. Is the money for a ghostwriting project the only reason for writing? I have turned down many writing assignments because they didn’t seem quite ethical as I see it. I have also turned down or skipped assignments because of low pay for what the person wanted.

Someone in a post coined the term “writing whore” as a person writing only for money. I know that I am not one. I write, edit, and review because I like what I do, and I like reading. I think I am a good writer and am improving as I write. People ask me to guest post about writing and editing. I have four blogs, Hub Pages, and contribute on two blogs about writing.

I receive compliments about the writing information on my main blog. In many ways, appreciation is worth more than money. I do wish payment for my writing and editing. Finding quality clients isn’t when working ethically. I signed a business ethics pledge that I live by.

Ghostwrite if you choose to, I am still on the fence about it, and need to think more about it.